In order to extend educational opportunities from the six-year primary to the nine-year lower secondary level. the Thai government implemented a new educational policy in which the secondary curriculum was to be provided free of charge at selected primary schools called Kayaioka schools. The national average of the proportion of children pursuing secondary education rose to 90.2% in 1996 from 52% in 1990 when the Kayaioka program was launched. This paper explores why and how such a dramatic expansion of secondary education took place in such a short period of time by use of a model which suggests that the level of development of the educational system is determined by the socio-cultural and the economic subsystem.
  Data were collected by fieldwork in Yasothorn Province in 1996 and 1997. It was found that the average continuation rate from primary to lower secondary among graduates of the four primary schools under study was 25% in 1989. 35% in 1990. 38% in 1991. 37% in 1992. when a Kayaioka opened in one of the primary schools under study. 70% in 1993. and 95% in 1996. Close examination of this transition lead us to conclude that secondary education prior to the mid-1980s was in the elite stage described by Trow (1961), after which it rapidly progressed to the universal stage, following a short interlude at the stage of mass education.
 Interviews with parents and their children revealed that: (1) Kayaioka played a decisive role in reducing difficulties involved in commuting a long distance by bicycle for many students. especially girls; (2) parents had been anxious to send their children to secondary school since the mid-1980s; (3) the establishment of Kayaioka generated the new concept that every child must go to a lower secondary school; and (4) traditional matrilineal households with uxorilocal marriages functioned to maintain the educational attainment of girls at an equal level to that of boys.
 The present study offers empirical data with which to refine the model proposed by Craig and Spear (1982). What we observe is a shift in the meaning of secondary schools from being elitist institutions to being schools for everyone, which is found to be prerequisite to rapid expansion of secondary education. The development of the ideology of “secondary education for all” was facilitated by the new employment practices that were adopted by modern industrial sectors in Thailand in the 1980s and 1990s. This new concept of secondary schools is also underlined by socio-cultural factors such as the pre-existing cultural meaning of child-rearing centering around bankap maidai (not enforcing one's wishes on a child), an egalitarian village social structure, a family organization with minimal gender differentiation, and a village-wide campaign of “Let's go to secondary school.” The development of a new ideology related to secondary schools led to a rapid rise in enrollment.

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This paper aims to introduce one piece of chữ nôm material, which Henri Maspéro mentioned in his article of 1912 as one of the oldest chữ nôm materials, and the existence of which remained for a long time unconfirmed. This paper also aims to analyze the chữ nôm characters contained in it from the historical phonological point of view.
 This material was rediscovered and introduced by Lê Thị Liên in her 1989 B. A. thesis. It is an inscription erected in 1343 on the Hộ Thành mountain (núi Non Nủớc) in the present Ninh Bình province, Vietnam. It concerns donations made by local inhabitants for the construction of a temple on the mountain.
 Before analyzing the chữ nôm characters in the inscription, we first review the traditional method of analyzing chữ nôm characters as proposed by Henri Maspéro in 1912, for the purpose of demonstrating the limitations of his method in the analysis of our material. We then refer to recent Viet-Muong phonological studies based on the newly discovered and described groups of the Viet-Muong branch such as Arem, Chứt, Mã Liềng, Aheu, and Pọng, most of which were not known when Maspéro wrote his paper. One of the main phonological features that differentiate them from the Mủờng dialects described by Maspéro is the existence of the disyllabic structure: (C₀)vC₁V(C₂)/T. We also utilize newly discovered chữ nôm materials such as the Sino-Vietnamese text of Phật thuyết đại báo phụ mẫu ân trọng kinh, compiled in the 15th century, which also throws light on our analysis.
 The material contains 11 common words and 18 person or place names written in chữ nôm characters. The latter 18 proper nouns are the object of discussion. Their common characteristics are the use of two characters for the transcription of one proper noun and occurrence of the vowel /a/ as the first element. We claim for these examples to show (1) certain patterns of the initial consonantal cluster, and (2) the trace of the disyllabic morphemes still preserved in the 14th century Vietnamese. Concerning the former point, we can reconstruct such patterns as /^*bl-/, /^*ml-/, and /^*k‘r-/ from our material. The latter point is of special importance. Nguyễn Tài Cẩn (1995) reconstructed the major members of the minor syllable ((C₀)v) in the disyllabic structure of Proto Viet-Muong as /^*pə/, /^*tə/, /^*cə/, /^*kə/, /^*sə/, /^*a/, and we can recognize four of them in our matelial: /^*pə/, /^*tə/, /^*kə/, /^*a/. The chữ nôm characters contained in the Sino-Vietnamese text of Phật thuyết đại báo phụ mẫu ân trọng kinh mentioned above, in turn, show all six of them, and the characters transcribing each of these minor syllables coincide with each other between these two materials, a fact that may reinforce the credibility of our analysis.
 In conclusion, the insertion of a non-distinctive schwa vowel /ə/ between each of the initial consonantal clusters seems to have been common in Vietnamese during the 14th-15th centuries, but not in all cases. And the disyllabic strucure of Vietnamese, or at least the trace of it, is recognized to have existed until as late as 15th century.

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Thanks to constant technological innovation in rice farming, there has been considerable economic growth in rural areas of Central Thailand since the 1960s. In K Village, a progressive rice-growing village in Suphanburi Province, the rice crop has doubled over the past thirty years and the income level of farmers has increased considerably. With the infiltration of the monetary economy and the rise of the standard of living of the villagers, a lavish style of celebration had spread on various ceremonial occasions including the rites of passage sponsored by each household, such as weddings and ordinations. Many villagers nowadays celebrate these occasions by giving a banquet of Chinese cuisine accompanied by a professional band, imitating the wasteful style of wealthy urban dwellers.
  The increased expense of these ostentatious and costly functions has also boosted the amount of money gifted, which is reciprocated on these occasions among villagers and their relatives and friends living outside the village. There has also emerged an equivalent monetary exchange system with rather clear and strict rules, which has weakened the personal and religious significance that former gift exchange had often had. The formations of such a standardized gift exchange system and its escalation have primarily been caused by the widespread use of money as a medium of exchange. Money is (1) an universal standard of value and (2) an impersonal and convenient instrument of exchange. Therefore, the formation of such a monetary exchange system is associated with, and promotes, the formalization and dilution of personal relationships between villagers, who now have close connections with people outside the village in various aspects of life.

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This article is a study of leadership recruitment patterns in Philippine local politics with a focus on the extent of leadership professionalization as well as on socioeconomic and occupational backgrounds of local executives at the town level. It argues that certain patterns which had not been identified before martial law have emerged in the post-martial law period. Among the major findings are the following: those who are related to the prewar leading families are still highly represented among mayors, although those who are not related to such families continue to enter into political leadership; mayors' family backgrounds no longer have a strong bearing on their present socioeconomic status; businessmen and lawyers are the largest groups among mayors in terms of their occupation; the majority of mayors are elected without political apprenticeship; and there is little evidence that they will give up their other occupations in order to professionalize local leadership. The paper also tries to explain why these patterns have emerged and discusses their implications.

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This paper discusses the causes, developments, characteristics, and significance of the 1905 anti-American boycott movement in Singapore and Malaya. The author argues that the Chinese in Singapore and Malaya in the first decade of the twentieth century should not be simplistically classified into two camps, the supporters of the Reformists and those of the Revolutionaries, as conventional wisdom has suggested. In 1905, Chinese with different political ideologies all worked together to boycott American goods for their self interests. They were concerned about their rights of residency and work in the British colonies. They feared that should the anti-Chinese policy prevailed in the United States, the British government would adopt a similar measure against the Chinese in Singapore and Malaya. The author also argues that the boycott movement was one of the earliest popular movements in the region because the Chinese from different social strata were all mobilized. More significantly, the 1905 boycott laid the foundation for popular support of the revolutionary movement in the subsequent years.

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